Daily Sales Break a Thousand! He Signed "Never Opened a Store"!

At seven-thirty on Saturday evening, the garage door stood wide open, and the wall at the back had gained another thick layer.

The last truck arrived at noon with a thousand units. Uncle Wang helped unload them, clicking his tongue as he held the eighteen yuan. "You kids in the Ma family are doing business like magic."

It had arrived just in time. Natural search alone had brought in over 280 orders during the day, completely clearing out the initial stock. If those thousand units hadn't arrived, they wouldn't even have been able to fight tonight's battle.

At eight tonight, the listing would be placed in a sub-venue for the seasonal change event. He had only one task: absorb every bit of traffic from the event and not miss a single order.

Everything he needed was already in place. More than a thousand reviews sat on the listing, the price was wholesale, and a thousand freshly stacked units were ready to go. The event would bring customers through the door, and the page would speak for itself.

He had a good idea of how many orders they could take. He had seen the event numbers at work during the day. The number of visitors to the event page in one night rivaled nearly half a month of natural search traffic. Breaking a thousand today was a certainty; all he was weighing was what time they would hit it.

Breaking a thousand meant revenue, but it also meant making waves. A store with over a thousand orders in one day would have its data sitting right under the department's nose. Once work started on Monday, the entire floor would explode. He had considered that long ago. There was only one thing he had to keep under control: no one could connect this store to Lin Fan from their office.

At seven-fifty, he opened the product detail page. The line on the banner image that read "Order today, ship today" was removed and replaced with "Ships within forty-eight hours."

That promise had been made during the price war. Back then, they only had two hundred orders a day, and they could grit their teeth and get them done. If seven or eight hundred orders flooded in tonight, leaving that promise up would be biting themselves. The battle was over, so it was time to take down the sign.

Ma Le leaned over with a cup of instant noodles. "You're making this look like a rocket launch. It's just an event."

"You'll know in a minute."

At exactly eight, he refreshed the event page.

On the sub-venue for the seasonal change event, their listing was two screens down, wedged among a row of old stores. The main image was still the one taken outside the garage.

At eight-oh-three, Wangwang chimed.

After that first notification, it never stopped.

Red dots kept popping up in strings. People asked about color differences, sizes, and shipping times. He replied with both hands in turns, and eventually switched straight to quick replies, leaving all the order-printing work to Ma Le.

At nine, the backend passed five hundred.

The 280 orders they had built up during the day had nearly doubled in just over an hour. This event channel really was pouring customers in.

The sales and reviews generated tonight would weld their ranking firmly in place. Even after the event ended, their top position in natural search would not budge. Double Eleven was still a month and a half away, but this store's foundation would be solidified tonight.

Ma Le had torn through three rolls of tape. He straightened up, gasping for breath. "Tell me, why are there more and more orders? It's like they're growing out of the ground."

"Save your strength. The courier's coming for the first pickup at nine-thirty."

At ten-thirty, they had 760.

At eleven, 890.

Just after eleven-thirty, the number on the screen jumped.

1,001.

Lin Fan leaned back in his chair and looked at that number for several seconds.

In the first week after they listed the product, they had only three orders total. On those nights, he had crouched in front of this computer revising titles until his eyes ached. A month and a half stood between then and today's number.

"How many?" Ma Le raised his head from the pile of packages.

"1,001."

"A thousand?!"

The tape clattered to the floor. Ma Le darted over in three strides, shoving his head in front of the screen and refreshing it himself.

"1,004! It's still climbing!"

He spun around in place, not knowing what to do, then finally plopped down on a sack and started counting on his fingers.

"Five yuan profit per order. A thousand orders, that's five thousand. Five thousand yuan in a day?!" His voice cracked. "Bro, one day for you is my monthly rent!"

After calculating today's numbers, his eyes shifted as he started calculating further.

"No, wait. This store's been open for over a month. Back when it broke a hundred, it made a few hundred yuan a day. During the price war, it had over two hundred orders a day too. And now today's hit." He pointed at Lin Fan. "Be honest. How much has this store made in total so far?"

There it was.

Ever since the business license had been registered under his name, that question had been on its way. It was only a matter of sooner or later.

"It's not as pretty as you think." Lin Fan kept replying to messages without looking up. "The money doesn't stay in hand. It all keeps rolling down the road. The 5,800 yuan payment for the second batch was just cleared, and tomorrow morning we need to chase down the third batch. Four thousand units minimum. Calculate that yourself."

"Over ten thousand." Ma Le blurted it out, then froze after doing the math. "So all the money turned into these sacks downstairs?"

"Take out courier fees and packaging costs, and there's only loose change left in the account."

Half the truth worked better than a lie. The money really was tied up in inventory, rolling over and growing thicker with every cycle. There was no need to explain that part to him.

Sure enough, Ma Le was unwilling to let it go. "There's got to be a total after all that rolling, right? I'm the chairman, aren't I? Don't I have the right to see the books?"

"Chairman Ma." Lin Fan turned his chair around and looked at him seriously. "Your Ma family hired me as the manager to handle purchasing, sales, and money so you wouldn't have to worry. If the chairman wants to check the books every day, then fire me and do it yourself."

"I can't do this." Ma Le answered instantly, waving his hand. "Fine, fine. You handle it."

He muttered as he climbed back into the pile of packages. After wrapping two parcels with tape, he stopped and added without turning around.

"Anyway, the card's mine. The money comes through me, so you can't run off."

The kid was truly lazy, but his head for accounts was sharp.

He knew when daily sales had passed a hundred. He knew when they had chased down two thousand more units. Tonight, he had watched them break a thousand right in front of him. In his eyes, this operation was becoming more real by the day. Fortunately, he was still happy for now, taking his five hundred yuan and playing Chairman Ma. The day he put all those figures together and calculated the business's true scale—that would be the time to sit down and have a serious talk.

Not tonight.

At midnight, the final courier pickup hauled away six large bags, and the backend count stopped at 1,106.

The garage was nearly empty again. Of the thousand units that arrived at noon, more than half were gone in one night. What remained would not last past tomorrow noon.

At eight tomorrow morning, he would call Old He. This time, four thousand units. Same rule as before: payment received, one truck shipped at a time.

At nine on Monday morning, the office was noisier than usual.

From the women's clothing team next door came one shout after another. They said some monster had emerged from Saturday's seasonal change event, pulling 1,100 orders in a single day and stomping every old store in the sub-venue beneath its feet. Someone had even pulled up the sales curve and said no textbook had ever taught a growth method like that.

Lin Fan checked the merchant qualifications in his hands, flipping through them page by page. By the third page, half his mind was in Yiwu. The first thousand units of the third batch would arrive that afternoon. When he had called Old He early Sunday morning, Old He had said "okay" three times in a row. The four thousand units had been put into overnight production.

At nine-thirty, a new email arrived in the team inbox. An administrative girl carried a stack of printed forms around, handing one to every desk.

Employee Conflict of Interest Self-Inspection Form.

The email explained it clearly: with Double Eleven promotional recruitment approaching, all employees were required to conduct a routine self-inspection and sign and submit the form before Friday.

The form was only one page, with several printed clauses. The first was the most eye-catching.

Neither I nor my immediate family members operate a store on the Taobao platform, and no conflict of interest exists.

Below were blank spaces for a signature and date.

Zhou Bin stood holding the form and gave it a shake, loud enough for half the office to hear.

"Let me say something. Don't treat this form as just a formality. What passes through the hands of people like us determines whether merchants live or die. If we open stores ourselves too, how is that any different from referees joining the game? If we find anyone doing that, we fire them. I'll be the first to raise my hand."

Someone heckled him, saying Brother Bin had great awareness and should sign first.

"I'll definitely sign first." Zhou Bin grabbed a pen, scribbled his signature in bold strokes, slapped the form onto the desk, and swept his gaze around the room. His eyes paused on Lin Fan for half a second. "New hires should take this seriously too. Keep your minds straight. Don't spend all day thinking about things outside your own category."

That label again. Fine, put it on him. The tighter they fastened it, the better.

Lin Fan pulled the form in front of him and read it clause by clause.

If they wanted to pick apart the wording, he could sign this form with a clear conscience. The store was not under his name or his parents' names. The business license, bank card, and delivery address had all belonged to the Ma family from beginning to end. Everything was black and white. Not a single word could be challenged.

But he knew better than anyone that it was only a sheet of paper.

If an audit really came knocking, no one would care about technical wording. They would trace where the money eventually went and who had been typing at the backend. Once they followed that trail, they would find him. At that point, when this signed form was slapped onto the table, another charge would be added: concealment.

Could he refuse to sign? No. If the whole team signed except him, he might as well raise his own hand. This form had never left anyone a second path. It was meant to draw a line. Once it was drawn, everyone passed. If something happened later, no one could claim innocence.

In the end, ever since the first batch of goods had been stacked into the garage, there had been no such thing as a way out. One more signed paper or one less made no difference.

He picked up the pen, signed his name, and added the date. His strokes were as steady as when he reviewed merchant qualifications.

After he handed in the form, Zhou Bin squared up the stack he had collected and casually said, "Lin, settle your mind after signing."

"Sure, Brother Bin."

When he returned to his desk, the commotion next door had yet to die down. Someone said it outright: letting numbers like those go without discussing them would be a waste. At next week's department review meeting, they had to bring it out and talk about it.

At the department review meeting, every operator in the department would sit in one room while data was displayed on the big screen and reviewed item by item.

When that day came, the screen would show the Ma family's store, while beneath it would sit a 3C newcomer who had just signed a self-inspection form. No one would connect the two.

Lin Fan neatly stacked the reviewed qualifications and pushed them aside, then pulled another stack over.